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Home >> Photography >> Digital An Ontological Overview of the Epson Stylus Photo 1270 Ink Jet Printer or Discussion on the Discourse and Relevance of Its Intrinsical Value Relating to Its Spatial Relationship to Input Devices (Sorry, was in a metaphysical frame of mind when coming up with the title) - Circa 2001 Digital, digital, digital. It’s everywhere nowadays and the photography newsgroups and mailing lists are full of references to this new standard for imaging. As with anything new there will always be traditionalists who eschew the newfangled technology for the tried and true silver-halide film and chemical darkroom for creating their prints. As a newcomer to digital imaging (and to photography in general with three years or so and counting) I’d like to think that I’m still open to possibilities of the future while admiring what we have currently. I like tradition as much as anyone else and as an historian by education I should certainly have respect and appreciation for the lessons of the past as I look at how those lessons can be applied to the future. Digital is going to take over, I think simultaneously from the low-end consumer market and from the higher end, serious amateur market. It has already made strong inroads into the professional market with many of today’s best photographers using their digital SLRs to complement their film SLRs with nonchalant ease (Jim Herbst and Moose Peterson are two who come to mind right away). Even when they take their images with the Nikon F5 cameras instead of the Nikon D1, their slides will get scanned for ease of editing and managing before being sold. With images ending up as digital scans anyway and with the ease in which these scans can be edited in Photoshop, why bother with film anymore? Note, when I mention the ease of editing in Photoshop, I refer to the ease in ensuring the slide is as close to reality (or as the case may be, the photographer’s personal vision) as possible and not for enhancing the image beyond its natural look or context. Photojournalists and sports photographers are another group who have taken to digital in a big way as a means of ensuring their images make it to the computer of an editor quickly before the competition does or in time for publishing for the next edition. Time is of the essence for these guys and gals and it’s no big deal to carry $20-30k digital SLRs made by Kodak but based upon Nikon or Canon bodies. It would certainly seem to appear that in about 5 years time or less, film is going to be an anachronism to these demanding professionals. It will be interesting to see the digital SLRs of five years in the future. Will the manufacturers be able to build the digital cameras as robustly as their film counterparts of today? Will Art Wolfe be using a digital body as water resistant as today’s Canon EOS 1v? Will Galen Rowell finally find the ultimate in lightness by using a tiny digital point and shoot the size of today’s Canon Elph APS camera with the resolution capable of producing the finest museum quality, poster–sized prints? I think so and I hope that by then I can afford to play in that digital realm with my own digital SLR. The way digital is going, we could see the 35mm based digital SLR system taking over from all other formats as digital CCDs or CMOS sensors will improve to such a point that the advantages of a larger silver-halide film will be negated. We no longer would have to compromise for size and weight considerations over ultimate quality. Certainly in 5 years time mass consumers will be in the transition of carrying digital point and shoots instead of film P&S and a quick trip to the drugstore digital booth will provide them prints on demand with many user defined editing parameters. Film will go the same way as vinyl records did when the CD was introduced some 15 years ago in the mid 1980s. Although vinyl albums are still appreciated by a few stalwarts, the promise of digital to provide even better performance is upon us (but only if the major companies can agree upon the 24bit/96khz or even better standard). Film will still be used by a few holdouts and fine art photographers but most of us will probably go fully digital once the performance and scale of economies cross so that excellent digital imaging does not cost in the hundreds or even tens of thousands as it does today. Six megapixel cameras have been introduced this year and probably by 2002 the 12 megapixel camera could be ready for marketing. Each year will see major improvements in quality and file size capability so that poster sized prints will be possible from the smallest and cheapest units (without any software manipulation). Now, just because the world of imaging is going to go digital we still need prints to hang on our walls and enjoy, which brings us to the actual point of this review, the Epson 1270 printer. On Printer Basics I’m not at the stage or level that I can offer you a detailed analysis of very high quality digital imaging and printing with the Epson 1270. For that you should visit Michael Reichmann’s Luminous Landscape and Bob Meyer’s web sites among others. I can only provide you with a tyro’s look at the Epson and what it does for me in my humble digital setup. If you’ve read my other digital reviews then you already know that I own Epson’s 1200 flatbed scanner with the transparency adapter. These two Epson products form the basis of my digital darkroom from input through to output. Those already in the digital know will recognize the Epson 1200 scanner as the weak link in the digital darkroom for its low resolution and the fact that it is not a true film scanner. Some users of the Epson 1200 indicate that its true optical resolution is actually only 600 dpi and that Epson uses a stepper motor to mimic 1200 dpi while others suggest that the stepper motor only comes into play when scanning at higher than 1200 dpi. The users who are leery of Epson’s claim of 1200 dpi resolution point out that at 1200 dpi one should be able to much deeper into the film and even to the film grain, they offer comparisons with true film scanners scanning the same piece of film at 1200 dpi and how much more resolution the film scanner offers compared to the Epson 1200. If the math as computed by my numerically-challenged brain is correct, the Epson 1200 is only capable of providing me with enough of a file size to output a 35mm scan to a 4x6 inch print at 300 dpi printing. With a 6x6 cm medium format chrome I can obtain a 9x9 inch size print but if I were a 4x5 large format shooter then I could print a 16x20 inch print. Now since I only have one 4x5 size chrome (an original 35mm slide scanned at Kodak Pro CD resolution and then output to a 4x5 sheet), large format scanning is not a factor. With 35mm and medium format the file sizes are most certainly not enough to maximize the 13x19 (actually 12x18 if you don’t want to mess up the edges of the paper since the 1270 does not have absorbers to sop up the excess ink but the newer 1280/1290 do and can print edge to edge) output size of the Epson 1270 printer. Add to these small file sizes the other difficulties associated with the Epson 1200 scanner (low and noisy density resolution in the shadows, basic scanning software that is pretty limited with negative films) and we can see that the Epson 1270 is not going to be taxed in providing a high quality print. If you’ve already read Michael Reichmann’s review of the Epson 1270, then you know that he thinks so highly of this printer that he does not utilize the services of an outside bureau for outputting with Lightjet printers. Of course he has the benefit of having a state of the art and extremely expensive Imacon film scanner so as to obtain the best possible scan outside of a drum scanner. My humble Epson 1200 at only $450 CAN is a poor man’s multi film format scanner. So, the Epson 1270 is an extremely good printer for the buck at under $700 CAN but I’m not going to see the full measure of its capabilities with my scanner and very basic Photoshop editing skills. On System Problems You will probably already have read or noticed my lament in the Updates section at how long the review of the Epson 1270 printer took me, so long that it was already super-ceded by the new Epson 1280/1290 printer. What the heck took so long? Computer system problems have been plaguing me since my initial foray into the digital darkroom environment. My old P120 computer running on 64 MB of RAM was up for the job of simple web site creation and Internet surfing but not up to snuff in going headlong into digital imaging beyond what I had been doing with a borrowed Umax flatbed (no transparency adapter) scanner (my Epson 1200 runs circles around that old Umax as far as quality flatbed scanning is concerned). The problems made themselves apparent when I finally decided that I couldn’t live without some kind of film scanner anymore. If you read my Epson 1200 review then you know that I’m not exactly swimming with big bucks so while dreams of Imacons ran in my head the bank account dictated something much, much lower in cost and expectations. The Epson 1200U Photo kit was the most cost effective entry into better digital imaging with the ability to scan not only 35mm but also medium format. Had I not had a medium format kit then I likely would have saved a few more loonies and toonies in the bank and gone for a Nikon LS-30 (or LS-III as it is known elsewhere). The Epson 1200 is a USB only scanner in its 1200U guise whereas the 1200S is a SCSI scanner. Just one problem, my old P120 CPU does not have USB ports. No problem, I’ll just order up a PCI-USB card and away I go. The 1200U scanner is dropped off for me and I install the new PCI-USB card and prepare to upgrade to Windows 98 at the same time, as the 1200U requires Win 98 due to the USB connection. SCSI and Parallel versions of the 1200 scanner can still make do with Win 95. The Win 98 upgrade failed due to the PCI-USB card not being compatible with the too ancient P120 motherboard. My brother-in-law rides to the rescue as a white knight and takes the old P120 off of my hands in favour of a Pentium II 233. For a time I was going along finely and I was scanning but the acquisition bug bites again and I really want to start printing some of those scans but I’m too cheap (actually too poor nowadays) to go out to a service bureau and get those scans output onto paper and also because I’m not so sure that my scans are good enough to warrant a Lightjet quality type of print. I want to do things in-house and control what and when I print to a decent enough size so that the best scans would amount to something on the barren chunks of real estate of my walls. The Epson 1270 was the obvious first and really the only choice I considered. The Epson 870 at a max 8x10 print size (ignoring the panorama sizes) was too small (but if I’m honest about it, most of my printing has been letter size with only a smattering of larger print sizes but that will change over the course of time). I juggle my remaining and fast depleting amount of change and order up the Epson 1270 printer. I clear off a nice amount of space on my rather restricted desktop and set up the printer. It too plugs into the PCI-USB card and away I go. For two weeks I’m blissfully happy and I prepare to write my review of the printer and the scanner (Part II on how well it scans for printing as opposed to Part I for web use). I want to experiment and try out some better scanning software such as Vuescan and Silverfast as well as the Photoshop plug-in of Genuine Fractals. So I put off the Epson 1270 review until I have time to do so. That time went on and on for weeks as shortly after the first two weeks of ownership of the Epson 1270, I start receiving connection errors and messages stating that data was being interrupted between the CPU and printer. Several wasted sheets of paper later and I start trying to isolate the connection problem that appears to show up for almost all print jobs attempted. A read of the troubleshooting section of the printer manual did not help any but in the installation section, I noticed a reference to a shielded USB cable. I quickly determined that my USB printer cable was not shielded and seek to obtain one. These are quite readily available for ordering but not for immediate purchase in the stores I went to and plus they cost ten times as much as a plain Jane USB cable. No matter, I’ll pay the price as I figure that I must be getting enough RF interference to disrupt my data flow. The shielded cable arrives and I eagerly reconnect and send a print job through. First print went off without a hitch and I figure I’m in the clear but on the very next print job only scant minutes from the first one I get the same error message again. I’m cursed! My brother-in-law was in attendance for the test prints and I inquire as to whether or not I could test my printer on his more up to date computer at his home so as to isolate whether the problem could be computer or printer related. He plays white knight again and offers up another computer for my use but this time a full-blown Pentium III 700 with reams of RAM and hard drive space. This new computer comes with four USB ports direct to the motherboard so there should be no compatibility problems and it follows Epson’s instructions of not using any USB hubs for connection. So far from my first test prints with the new computer there have been no problems with the printer. I’ve determined that the problems with the connection had to do with the PCI-USB adapter card in the PII 233. I had this suspicion in the back of my mind after talking to a computer sales person at my local London Drugs. He advised me that it was not likely the cable but the card and that my recourse would be either parallel port printing or a new computer. I didn’t take him seriously and ordered the shielded cable instead as I figured I should be using one anyway. But a recent experience just before retiring the PII 233 made me realize just how right he was. In preparation for the upgrade to the PIII 700 I obtained a Zip drive to copy some of my old files to a Zip disk and then eventual transfer to the new hard drive. The old PII 233 hung up and crashed several times when I was trying to transfer data from the old hard drive to the Zip drive. The data stream was interrupted and the Zip drive could no longer save, much like my 1270 would quit printing due to loss of the data stream. Did I mention that the Zip drive was USB and it was plugged into the PCI-USB adapter card? Enough said. All this talk of USB problems and computing requirements indicate that the Epson 1270 is quite demanding of computing resources and requires fairly recent hardware to get the most from it. Digital imaging is already quite a tax on system resources and I’m quite thankful that I’m a little bit more up to date with my computing hardware. On Color Management, Calibration and Scanning Software Now that the printer was finally working properly thanks to a whole scale computer upgrade, I finally started printing. It was great being able to print and not worry about whether or not the data stream would cut out halfway through. I was happy enough with the initial prints through the new computer but when I got to a print of a macro image of some flower petals that were of a delicate pastel pink hue as seen in the original chrome and on the monitor, the print was quite different then expected. The pink hues became a more saturated rosy color and at that point I realized I had some work to do with system color calibration and management. Learning curve once more. I still have a lot of tweaking to do with my monitor calibration and color management but that will be for a future article. I did briefly try the demo versions of Vuescan and Silverfast scanning software to see if either would address the shortcomings of the Epson Twain software. Vuescan has the simplest looking user interface but I never did figure out how to use it correctly. The lack of a true and clear manual made for some awkward and blind attempts to scan. I had high hopes for Vuescan because its claim to fame is its support for so many color and B&W negative films. Plus Vuescan has the ability to enable multi-pass scanning from many scanners including my Epson 1200, to provide for cleaner scans and deeper shadow detail extraction. Silverfast is in a whole other league and is bloody powerful and so it should be for the money required to purchase it. Vuescan only costs $40 US whereas Silverfast is $150 US for an entry-level scanner like the Epson 1200 but can cost nearly $1000 US for topnotch scanners such as the Imacons. It looks great and the idea is to get the initial scan down so well that you won’t need to use Photoshop much. This is somewhat perverse that the scanning software should be so good as to negate a $1000 CAN software like Photoshop yet require you to already own that $1k software because it’s a plug-in to Photoshop. Kind of a catch-22 isn’t it? I will probably breakdown and buy Silverfast in the future if I decide that I have to continue shooting film and scanning it for personal printing. For now I just use the Epson Twain software and edit via Photoshop since I’ve already got it anyway. I’m holding out from buying because I don’t want to buy it only to upgrade the scanner later on and have to buy another version again. Someday I'll also get myself a top notch Apple Mac system and rid myself of the evils of Windows based color management or lack of. Update - I broke down and bought Vuescan to tide me over until the pot of gold strikes for me and I can buy the Nikon Super Coolscan 8000 ED. On Genuine Fractals One chunk of software that I did break down and order is Genuine Fractals. GF uses some fancy software interpolation to allow an image imbedded with it to grow into much larger file sizes then the original scan resolution would have otherwise allowed. GF does work but don’t expect it to work miracles for you at the low end of the digital imaging and file size spectrum. Comparing a file (from a color negative) that has been imbedded with GF to that of the same file that has been upsized with Photoshop’s Bicubic Interpolation reveals that GF does indeed offer smoother looking images when viewing at high magnifications. The pixels are not as blocky as would be with Bicubic Interpolation. The problem with GF for me in my experience (and this is an important factor to consider here – my experience only) is that I expected it to do some wonderful things for my 35mm films as scanned with the Epson 1200 flatbed. It doesn’t and trying to scan a 35mm negative or slide at only 1200 dpi is the problem. Add to this the Epson 1200’s lack of ability to pull deep shadow detail and I’m not left with a whole lot to work with. Initial test results with a 1200x1800 scan of a 35mm negative that had been GF’ed and then printed at 360 dpi at 8x10 through the Epson 1270 provided poor results. Poor enough that a machine-print of that same negative at a local shop would have provided superior results (and yes the shot was taken with a tripod). In this example I would not rule out my own lack of ability as a digital imager as having a large role in the poor looking prints but again, a 1200 dpi scan of a 35mm piece of film does not provide much to work with. Michael Reichmann of the Luminous Landscape also commented on GF’s lack of ability to do much for the images beyond what Bicubic Interpolation could do for small original file sizes. If you visit Altamira’s web site and look at their products you will notice that they have a LE version of GF and looking closer at the details of what it requires one quickly notices that just the LE version alone requires at least a 10 MB file size in order for it to work. I think 10 MB is probably a good figure to be guided by as to how large the files should be in order to get something meaningful out of GF. My 1200x1800 dpi (using 35mm film’s 1x1.5 inches multiplied by 1200) scan provides me with a file size of just over 6 MB, which is far short of 10 MB. So be forewarned about using Genuine Fractals for very small file sizes. For larger original file sizes such as those obtained when I scan 6x6 size film then I have something good to work with and it was an interesting test to see what Bicubic Interpolation could provide at larger than 8x10 print sizes. This was important to me because despite having nice and sizable medium format film to work with, my low resolution 1200 dpi scanner will not allow me to print beyond 11x11 at the popular 240 dpi print output resolution. For me to take advantage of the Epson 1270’s 12x18 inch print size capability I need to use software manipulation, either GF or Bicubic. What is of concern is how much integrity can be retained with the smaller files by the Genuine Fractals and the Bi-cubic methods of interpolation. I’ve already mentioned that initial results using GF on a color negative film was not good but I wanted to have another go at it and this time using slide film. The 13x19 print tests below were done with Epson Matte Heavyweight Paper. I’m not singing in the rain about the quality of this paper but it’s quite cost effective for testing purposes compared to the much higher priced Premium Semi Gloss and Premium Glossy papers.
I used a slide I took of the southern rim of the Grand Canyon back in 1997 as a test image for Bicubic and GF comparisons. The image as seen here was shot with a Nikon F70 and a consumer quality 80-200mm f4.5-5.6D AF lens; camera mounted on a Manfrotto tripod and shot with Fuji Velvia at ISO 50. Scanned with the Epson 1200U at 1200 dpi and edited through Photoshop, I increased the file size using the Bicubic interpolation resizing and GF for a 360 dpi print output since the original scan file would only be large enough to output a 3x5 inch print at the same output resolution of 360 dpi. Results on paper? No difference, period. Not what I had expected. Test 2 using a medium format 6x6 chrome and cropped for 12x18 size print format
Another 6x6 scan was used as seen here (Lynn Canyon trails in North Vancouver). This image is a bit questionable for testing since I’ve softened the image via Photoshop Layers but as I had already printed off an 11x14 size print via Genuine Fractals I decided to take the original TIFF file to the same size via Bicubic and again I could detect no qualitative differences.
But since my maximum print size is 12x18 and I haven’t had requests for wall size enlargements of my images I won’t be testing out this technical aspect of Genuine Fractals. This test at larger print sizes was a bit of a let down in terms of how Genuine Fractals under-whelmed me but neither did I want to be forced to use Bicubic interpolation and always wonder if I could get more if I had actually used GF instead. Now I know. How did the prints look aside from the comparisons? Pretty good when the original scan file had the quality and details. Both methods of interpolation did well to keep the integrity of the original file but at these larger print sizes, mistakes I had made with regard to the original film exposure came through more clearly than the 8x10 sizes. Some images very much needed to be held at arms length to allow the print some breathing room but the ones that were bang on for sharpness could be viewed right up to the minimum focusing distance of my eyes and still look good. The image of the Grand Canyon
was one of those mistakes I made as I shot at the minimum aperture of
my then consumer 80-200mm lens and though the slide seemed sharp as
seen through a light table (only a 4x loupe at the time though), enlargements
even at 8x10 seem to lack crispness and I could only sharpen so much
before the image would begin to fall apart. At 12x18, the weaknesses
of the image are magnified that much more and serves as a lesson to
NOT shoot at minimum apertures for infinity distance subjects (diffraction
and atmospheric conditions not being the best for highly sharp images). One important lesson to learn regarding digital imaging and outputting is that longevity of the prints is directly tied to the relationship between the inks and the papers used. Epson has made some very generous claims (backed by Wilhelm Research) with regard to how long prints from their printers can last for but one important factor to realize is that the best claims refer only to Epson’s Matte Heavyweight Paper and not to their Premium Semi Gloss or Premium Glossy papers. For these papers the longevity is reduced (I assume for Semi Gloss as I have not seen any claims of how long prints from this paper will last for). Unfortunately for me, I desire the long lasting qualities of Epson’s Matte Heavyweight Paper but much prefer the look from Epson’s Premium Glossy and Semi Gloss papers. I also wished that Epson would be a bit more accurate with the way they describe their papers to better reflect how the photo industry describes photo paper. Epson’s Matte Heavyweight paper is akin to thin cardboard as far as I’m concerned. The inks seem to bleed slightly more so then with the glossier papers and the quality of the prints never quite look photo realistic (my opinion only as there are many satisfied users of Matte Heavyweight paper including my friend Birt). This paper is also NOT a matte finish unless you think that plain paper is matte-like. Epson’s Premium Glossy Paper is quite an excellent paper (if you like the look that is) with the traditional shiny look of 1-hour processors. But the paper used by the typical one hour processor is actually a semi-gloss finish and there is a misconception that what you get back from the drugstore is glossy when in fact it is actually semi-gloss. So Epson Premium Glossy Paper is akin to the photo industry’s semi-gloss papers. Anal retentiveness aside, if you want some snap to your digital images this paper is quite good for it but be warned that your prints from an Epson 870 or 1270 printer will not last the twenty-five year maximum life span Epson claims for these printers (but it will provide a pretty damn decent 10 year life span). Only Matte Heavyweight paper will provide that type of longevity. Now, I think you can guess that of the two types of paper that Epson had readily available when the 1270 was first introduced, I prefer the Premium Glossy type over the Matte Heavyweight but that does not mean that I would want to always use Premium Glossy paper. Sometimes you do want a bit of subtlety to your images and Premium Glossy has all the subtlety of a teenage boy splashing on his Old Spice. No, you want something that’s a bit toned down without having to resort to making your images look like they were printed on pamphlet paper. Enter Epson Premium Semi Gloss papers. Premium Semi Gloss paper has become my all around favorite paper to use because you can use it for portraits equally as well as for scenics. And the finish is actually akin to what the photo industry calls a matte surface, or at least I can barely tell the difference between Premium Semi Gloss compared to the proofs I receive from my medium format sized color prints. There is the same surface texture to the two types of papers that I’m not sure how to describe except as being the same as “pearl” finish paper for black and white prints. I’m not sure about the longevity of Premium Semi Gloss but Epson classifies it as being archival in quality which leads me to think that it should be almost if not just as good as Matte Heavyweight paper. Doing the initial bit of research into alternative papers to Matte Heavyweight and Premium Glossy led me to Epson’s web site and noticing that Epson’s archival papers looked a lot more interesting then the two consumer oriented papers. But it appeared that Epson was promoting Semi Gloss as being for their pigment based printers such as the 2000P. No worries here though as the packaging on the Semi Gloss papers indicate that this paper is compatible with the 870 and 1270 printers. Excellent! I like this paper so much that I do not plan on using Premium Glossy anymore. Doing direct comparisons of the same image printed on both papers reveals that Premium Semi Gloss gives away nothing to Premium Glossy (unless you don’t like the Semi Gloss surface texture). Before finishing this section on paper I should note that Epson seems to have had problems getting their formulation right for the Premium Glossy Paper. Pre December 2000 Premium Glossy suffered from powdery residue problems. I had a package of letter size paper that suffered from this problem and only a chance browse through Epson’s web site led me to realize it was the paper at fault. Basically what happens is that the print fresh from the printer looks fine but after a few days the darker portions of the printed image start to powder up and essentially turn into dust. This happened irregardless of whether or not the print was protected in archival sleeves or left out in the open. But not all the paper from the package suffered from the problem, perhaps about half the papers I had used were affected. Epson replaced this paper very quickly once I got a hold of them – that took a while as I had to go through Epson USA before getting in touch with Epson Canada. Premium Glossy Paper also seems to be the culprit behind some issues regarding color casts, in particular orange color cast shifts caused by exposure to air with high levels of ozone. My brief time with the 1270 has not produced any prints suffering from an orange color cast but it does serve notice that Premium Glossy Paper continues to have issues regarding its on again, off again qualities and hence another reason why I use Semi Gloss Paper. It seems that southern regions (below the equator) suffer from this problem more so then northern regions such as my somewhat humid and damp Pacific Northwest temperate rainforest area of North America. Update
to this orange color cast issue – I came across an excellent web site
dedicated to informing users of Epson printers of the problems and how
it is NOT isolated to just Premium Glossy papers but to ALL papers made
by Epson. Check out Bob
Meyer’s site for more info. In the meantime I took some images printed
on the old defective Premium Glossy paper and put one image into a Print
File archival sleeve and taped it shut so no air could get in. I took
another image (from the same sheet as the sealed image – two 5x7’s printed
on one letter size sheet) and placed it on a south-facing windowsill
to see how both would fare with regular exposure to sunlight. I’ll report
back if anything meaningful results from this very informal test. I
have the same image printed on good Premium Glossy paper and protected
in an archival sleeve in a binder so as to have a reference print to
compare the exposed prints too. On Digital Artistry and Cost Factors Once you’ve got the printer hooked up correctly, the software is up and running and you’ve got some kind of calibration for the digital darkroom then comes the hard part, the editing. Scanning and then printing is quick and easy and can be done in literally a few minutes but when trying to eke out the best from your images you’re going to have learn how to use Photoshop effectively and understand what Levels mean and what it does and how to read the histograms from it (among all the other powerful tools offered by Photoshop). Getting into more complex editing is a whole other article and one that I’m still struggling with to get the best out of my scans. One editing parameter that seems to really require some artistry is the Un-sharp Masking filter. Sharpen too little and your images lack the crispness that traditional chemical prints can provide at low enlargement factors. Sharpen too much and the prints look horrible with an uneasy and disjointed view for the eyes. Jagged lines or pixelization show up contributing to this unease. But get the sharpening right and you’ve entered into that world in which the boundary between chemical darkroom prints and digital prints are blurred if not outright indistinguishable. My results to date are probably only about 50% in terms of prints that I’m actually fully satisfied with. Fortunately, once the upfront costs have been squared away, digital printing is far cheaper and far more convenient then going out to the pro lab and having even just cheap machine print 8x10s done. The cost breakdown of digital imaging with the 1270 is as follows:
I estimate that you could probably print off two packages of 20 letter size paper per color cartridge, which works out to about $3.20 per print (not including the capital expenditure of the printer and cable itself). Compare this to about $10 per 8x10 machine print or double that for a custom print of the same size. Add to that total control of the editing process and you can see the significant monetary and qualitative benefits of having the Epson 1270. If you decide that you’d rather only have 8x10 sized proof prints and would rather have professionals handle larger sizes then you can save some more money by buying the Epson 870 or the new 890 printers. *All prices quoted here in Canadian funny money, prices in real money (US $) will be different. The assumption here is that you would only edit and print off your best images and not sit in front of the computer forever scanning and editing all your images. There does have to be some consideration for other things in life you know. One tip for local Vancouver area readers of this review, London Drugs has very competitive prices on inks and papers but you will have to special order Premium Semi Gloss papers and other larger sizes of papers due to the store being more consumer oriented then professionally oriented. Despite it being a drugstore, London Drugs’ computer departments are often larger and far better stocked then dedicated computer stores. And though very photographically incorrect, I have used their one-hour processing once or twice with acceptable results for color prints (the often thrashed drugstore prints). The Final Analysis I would be lying to say that I’m fully satisfied with the quality of the images I’m obtaining right now with the Epson 1200 scanner and outputted to the Epson 1270 printer. After the initial euphoria of having some new equipment to use and getting very fast gratification from scanning and then printing in a matter of minutes I had to sit down and really look at the quality of the output to that of traditional chemical enlargements or to professional digital prints. The bottleneck is the scanner as well as my own abilities at digital imaging. The latter can be improved upon as I gather more experience and will not be as big a factor down the road but unless I do something major at the input stage, I don’t see myself being satisfied in the long term. The choices I face are to save my money and purchase the Nikon 8000 ED multi-film format scanner or purchase a digital SLR and go wholly digital for my imaging needs. It would mean no more medium format kit as I couldn’t see myself continuing to use film cameras very often if I had a digital kit. Although I would keep a 35mm film camera around even this unit would see minimal usage if I were to go digital. The choice as it stands now for me is fairly equal with only upfront costs being the prime consideration. Medium format scans on the 1200 result in only a 7 megapixel size file and this is not a make or break situation when comparing it to the 6 megapixel SLRs to be made more widely available by mid 2001. The make or break situation is up front cost of having to spend a considerable sum of money for a new digital SLR kit. The upside is far less film and processing costs and major instant gratification of being able to view and edit images on the spot (with a laptop). The Nikon 8000 ED scanner is awesome in its cost to quality ratio and blows the doors off the likes of the Imacons and Polaroid competitors (on a cost basis – I’m not talking about the quality of scanning since no one knows that yet as of this writing) with its suggested retail price of $3000 US compared to the $10k US Imacons or even the $6k Polaroid 45 Ultra. The downside is continued film and processing costs and the ever present and evil dust (yes, yes I know the 8000 ED has Digital Ice software). Neither choice is particularly realistic at this time so it is academic but then again neither did I think I would own a multi kilobuck medium format kit a couple of years ago. In the meantime I can live with what I’m getting now from the Epson 1200 and 1270 units. Although the results are rather dismal with 35mm sized film the results from medium format can be quite good. Portrait shots I’ve taken and then scanned (original negative not the proof prints) and printed at 8x10 surprise me with the amount of detail that can show up. The cross weaving of a person’s suit jacket reveal themselves so clearly that I can count them with the naked eye. Even in very small detail areas such as the eyes of babies and children, I can easily make out the dual catch-lights of my two umbrella firing strobes or make out the fact that my baby daughter is wearing a velvet-like outfit as compared to my son’s cotton shirt. The prints when properly edited (and here I’m primarily trying not to over sharpen the image, resulting in awful looking prints) for color can be quite good and show just how sharp and revealing my Bronica kit is (perhaps too much so when looking at the prints of my parents – wrinkles and other age-related factors). It’s also a good idea not to view the prints with a critical eye until an hour after the printing so as to allow the ink to dry and get rid of the magenta color cast The first few portrait prints I viewed gave me some concern as I looked at the dark hair of my subjects and saw no detail, just a mass blob of black. But when viewed again at a later time the dark hair would become detailed and if the subject has them, all the gray hairs too. This is similar to subject areas of continuous tones, the print fresh out of the print feeder will appear to be bleeding with no details being revealed but again, left to dry for some time would remedy that. So although I can hardly verify Michael Reichmann’s claims of the Epson 1270’s output being so good as to negate his need to do Lightjet printing anymore, I’m quite satisfied that the Epson 1270 is up to whatever I can put through it and feel that I have not seen the full measure of its qualities due to my scanner. I hope to do some testing with alternative input sources to verify this premise in the future. Update on Epson Papers - March 31, 2001 I mentioned in the main report above that I preferred Epson Premium Semi Gloss papers over Premium Glossy and Matte Heavyweight papers. Since purchasing a couple of packs of Epson Matte Heavyweight, mainly because Premium Semi Gloss is scarce on the West Coast except in letter size packs, I've tried Matte Heavyweight for various print jobs and was surprised when I found it to be superior for certain types of images than Premium Semigloss or Premium Glossy.
Of the defective Premium Glossy paper I was testing for orange casts, I placed an unprotected 5x7 and a protected 5x7 on a southern exposure window on March 12. Checking up on them every few days I finally noticed the unprotected 5x7 print turning orange about two weeks into the test but I would not say that the orange cast is particularly strong at this point in time. Some comments written on the print with a black felt marker had yellow halos around them. The protected 5x7 was still okay for color casts but the black felt marker comments were lightening up. Strangely enough, the constant exposure to daylight seemed to have stopped the defective Premium Glossy paper from turning into dust. Note that the prints would be exposed to most hours of daylight and during the mid morning to late afternoon hours, would be in direct sunlight exposure - that is when we actually had sunshine on the "wet coast" of Canada. I happen to browse through my latest family photo album, one primarily dedicated to pictures taken since the birth of my daughter last December. I came across one of the family shots I had taken with the Bronica kit and did a double take when viewing it. The machine proof print seemed very drab and lifeless compared to a 5x7 print of the same shot that I had scanned with the Epson 1200U and then printed via the 1270. Most of the time I'm quite happy with the quality of the machine proof prints I receive back from the lab but in comparison to the prints I've made myself in which I am able to brighten up the scans and do a bit of editing, the results are amazing. So far, everyone who has seen the prints I've made via the Epson 1200 and 1270 are amazed at the quality and can find no artifacts indicating that the output was digital in origin. Amazing stuff and just another positive indicator that the Epson 1270 printer has been one of my best and fulfilling purchases yet. Update - April 2001 Although my own informal test procedures include exposing some prints to direct southern exposure sunlight, exposure to light is NOT the cause of the orange cast experienced by many users of the Epson Stylus Photo printers. Ozone and/or other airborne contaminants is the cause of the orange cast and various factors in how you treat the prints can reduce or increase the likelihood of the orange cast. You MUST store the prints directly behind glass (as in a frame) or in archival quality plastic sleeves in an album to enjoy the long lasting nature of the latest Epson inks and papers. Glass framing may still be an issue if you use a matte to keep the print off the glass surface, as you would then have an air pocket in front of the print. Using a matted frame may still allow the orange cast to reveal itself but over a much longer time period than an unprotected print. The obvious problem with direct glass framing is that some portions of the print will stick to the glass and cause some blemishes. Other users of the Epson printers indicate that leaving an unprotected print in flowing air (near an open window) will exacerbate the orange cast problem. Some resourceful users have taken to lamination and acrylic sprays to eliminate or reduce/slow down the orange cast problems. While others ensure the prints are protected as soon as they are dry. I take the latter approach of either framing or storing in Print File archival sleeves. I even ordered a bunch of 16x20 size sleeves to protect the larger 13x19 size print output. I have not seen any color shifts with my protected prints and I have a few framed but matted prints that I'm keeping my eye on to see if the air pocket will induce a color shift. As for the exposed test prints, although the unprotected print is now suffering from an orange cast, I've also been quite surprised and impressed with the light fastness of the prints on Premium Glossy paper. I would have thought the constant exposure to the sun's UV radiation would have faded the prints badly but to date both are holding out very well compared to my notes written on them with a black felt. I may have to expand the test further and include direct comparisons to traditional chemical prints under constant sun light exposure. The strip of unprotected Premium Semi Gloss paper I have sitting on my shelf in indirect light shows no sign of color shifting or fading. I recently received some Epson Archival Matte paper and printed off ten letter size prints of various images right away to test it out. I find that as I use Epson's matte papers more the better I like the qualities of the paper. For personal use and my personal album I like the matte papers and of course it's much easier on the wallet than either of the Premium Glossy papers. For prints to be given to others than I would still use Epson Premium Semi Gloss or Premium Glossy because that is the look and texture that lay people expect from a photograph but in a protective sleeve or behind a glass frame few people would be able to tell the difference between matte or glossy papers. Archival Matte is thicker than Matte Heavyweight but still not as thick as the Premium Glossy papers but I do appreciate its ability to absorb the ink better than Matte Heavyweight (subjectively that is as the lighter paper seem to sag from the weight of the ink fresh from the printer). One of these days I would love to put together a 8x10 wedding album for someone using my Bronica SQ kit and then scanning and printing via my Epson units. I think the output quality would be very good and appreciated by the prospective clients at a far lower cost than traditional sources of wedding albums and photos.
Epson Printer Tests for Resolution A recent Email conversation with a friend reminded me that I had meant to do a variety of testing with my Epson 1270 printer of various DPI output settings to determine when a print would no longer cease to be considered photo realistic. My friend’s assumption based upon viewing some test laser prints at a pro lab was that even very low DPI resolutions would suffice for a print to be deemed photo realistic and challenged me to test those assumptions when I demurred at his statements. I should note that my friend is an engineer/programmer (arrogant bugger at that as most of these geeks seem to be) and tends to hypothesize a lot without having much personal experience in digital imaging. I picked up the gauntlet and proceeded to print off several copies of an image at various DPI settings and even went further to test out just what Epson’s 1440 DPI claims meant in the real world. The main test image was my shot of the BC Supreme Court building that looks more like a planetarium than a law court (seen earlier in this review of the Epson 1270). I chose this image because of the many horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines created by the metal skeletal structure of the building should make pixelization easy to see at lower DPI settings. The secondary image was a portrait shot of my mother and was used to test the 1440 DPI setting of the Epson 1270. I used Epson’s Matte Heavyweight paper for the tests since I have an abundance of this paper that I don’t know what to do with since buying a couple of 50 packs of the superior Archival Matte paper, so Matte Heavyweight is an also ran in Casa Leong. Matte Heavyweight is also much cheaper than Epson’s better Premium Glossy and Semigloss papers too and as much as I like to contribute to the general body of knowledge on digital printing, my wallet can only take so much for the good of humanity. The test procedure (not blind as I was always aware of which print was which) went as such:
I chose 150 dpi for 7 and 8 because it seemed that the number 3 print was still fairly decent to the naked eye and would be a good in between resolution to test at. The portrait prints were done at:
The results of the test prints (naked eye as well as through a 8x loupe)? The images here were scanned from the 8x10 prints at 300 dpi scanner resolution and cropped at 100% magnification with no editing involved for sharpness or color correction. These are the direct raw scans.
I would not suggest that any of the examples save for the lowest output dpi prints, would present a make or break situation for most people. But as an enthusiast, I think my personal expectations are fairly high less wise I wouldn't have spent so much money on photographic equipment and digital accessories. My choice of setting will continue to be 1440 dpi at the highest output dpi I can obtain from my scanner. This despite the heavy time penalty for printing at 1440 settings.
I don’t know if the penalty would extend to ink use though but some users comment that higher dpi settings do not use up anymore ink than lower settings. Speaking of ink cartridges, I ran out of ink as I was printing off all of these test prints and took the opportunity to verify if Epson is indeed ripping people off by having their microchip ink cartridges say empty even when still full of plenty of ink. I pried apart the top cover from the expended cartridge and proceeded to ink up a few of my fingers in the process only to find that each inkwell has a foam piece wedged inside and I couldn't tell how much ink was actually left in each well. Given the amount of ink that oozed out of the foam and onto my fingers and table I figure Epson probably did cheat me out of another two or three prints but certainly not one third as one 1270 user had stated on the Epson x7x Printer Mailing List. I think I got my money’s worth out of that ink cartridge. Now I wonder if my fingers will turn orange with exposure to circulating air and whatever ozone is prevalent in coastal, western North America. The real world implications of this little test is that a person could print off a 8x10 at 200 dpi printer output and have the Epson printer set to 720 dpi and not lose much at all to the full resolution images at 1440 dpi. You would save a bit of time and the lay person off the street would never be able to detect any difference at all and even the anal among us can only see the differences with the print right up to our noses or through a high power loupe. Since I have so many copies of the same image it would present a fine opportunity to test out various color and light fastness issues that have plagued the x70 series Epson printers. Read about some papers I have used with the 1270 printer. Read why custom printer profiles are important. |
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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By
now, most every photographer who has not done a Rip Van Winkle will
have heard of Epson and their fine line of photo quality ink jet printers.
Epson has pushed the boundaries of photo quality imaging with each generation
of printers and also made them more affordable with each successive
generation that even I was able to afford to get into the home digital
darkroom. The 1270 is a moderately large printer for home use being
quite wide so as to accommodate the 13x19 size papers. It is not particularly
deep but it still needs a nice amount of space round it for when the
prints feed out of the front of the unit. Noise levels are not objectionable
to my ears but it has been stated more than once that its predecessor
the 1200 was a bit noisy to some. 
Test 1 using a 35mm slide and interpolated
to 12x18 print size 
I use the macro shot of this flower as the test chrome and quite frankly
and surprisingly I found little to choose from between Genuine Fractals
and Photoshop’s Bicubic Interpolation again. I expected GF to walk all
over Bicubic when using larger file sizes but if I hadn’t marked the
prints to identify which was which I wouldn’t have been able to tell
the difference. More testing would be in order using different images
with alternate subjects and details to see if Bicubic continues to do
well against Genuine Fractals. 
I
took another 6x6 scan and zoomed into 200% for a more critical look
at some details and only at this high magnification could I detect slight
differences between Genuine Fractals and Bicubic interpolation and we
are talking slight here. What can I conclude about this test?
This
shot of the BC Supreme Court building in Vancouver was handheld with
my 
Specifically,
the types of images that I found ideal for a paper such as Matte Heavyweight
are the "artsy" types of images such as the one seen at right
here (unfortunately the small scale image does not show the "artiness"
of the image very well at all). This image was heavily edited via Photoshop
to induce a watercolor style of look and plenty of noise was layered
on to accentuate the look. The art-paper like qualities of Matte Heavyweight
is a good match for such an image and others like it. Premium Semi Gloss
is still an excellent paper for most other uses and some prints that
I found to be merely okay printed on Matte Heavyweight had a definite
"Wow" factor when printed on Premium Semi Gloss. If you wanted
maximum impact for an image then Premium Glossy is probably still the
one to use and the colors seem to pop off the paper.
